Seize the Initiative: Put the Heat on the White House and Your Congressman

From Beyond Chron:

Federal education policy is on the brink of change. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), known in its current form as “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) is overdue for reauthorization. In response, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently released his Blueprint for the vision he and President Barak Obama share for our children’s education. Sadly the Blueprint carries on much of NCLB’s most destructive tactics and adds a few of its own.

High stakes testing, a narrowing of curriculum and a further imposition of a market-based framework are just a sampling of what is literally being sold to us. All this, despite the fact that none of these strategies have produced any of their promised results and that they are fundamentally in opposition to the human-centered project of nurturing our children to fully develop into engaged members of our society.

As disturbing as this vision is, time still remains to intervene, and intervene we must. With the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives still separately debating over what the specifics in the policy should look like, and with a political balance of power between Democrats and Republicans creating something of a stalemate, nothing is happening fast. This lack of alignment presents an opportunity for parents, teachers, students and others involved in working for strong public schools for all children. We can attempt to hold our policy makers accountable for the problems they have generated over the last many years of NCLB, and present the alternatives that would provide students with the type of education we know they deserve and that our society needs them to have.

On her recent tour of the Bay Area and in her new book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, Diane Ravitch made a specific appeal to Bay Area parents to go directly to one of the seats of power around education policy – the offices of Bay Area Congressman George Miller, Chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor. Representative Miller was a major champion of NCLB and has enthusiastically embraced the Duncan/Obama Blueprint, which will likely influence many others in Washington. We therefore have a very precious window of opportunity to provide him with some apparently much needed re-education about exactly why this Blueprint is the wrong way to go.

Below is an open letter to Congressman Miller that addresses some of the many reasons why NCLB and the Administration’s Blueprint are simply unacceptable for our kids and what we could do instead. If public education supporters throughout the Bay Area similarly contacted Miller using this letter or better yet their own stories not only of what has gone wrong with NCLB, but with their visions of the educational programs they want to see for their kids and all kids, we would be sending him a strong clear message.

Dear Representative Miller,

My name is Lisa Schiff and I am the parent of twin sixth-graders in a public middle school in San Francisco. My children’s entire education has taken place under the shadow of No Child Left Behind, a shadow that I am hoping you can clear as you work with President Obama, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and other officials to craft new federal education policy. Parents throughout the Bay Area and the country are counting on you in your role as Chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor to listen to our voices as we tell you about what hasn’t worked for our children these past eight years and what our vision of education is for all of our children.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has been a damaging force for our children and their schools. As I have observed directly with my own kids and have heard from many other families, teachers and principals have had to work hard to ensure that my children and all of the children in their school were able to jump through the rote, testing frameworks required by the law and developed the required variety of test-taking strategies. All of this was a tremendous waste of time and resources, but was especially a loss of precious educational moments.

But because educators and parents understood that a well educated person is exposed to more than simply standardized tests, reading, writing and mathematics, we worked together to find creative ways to bring in history, science, art, music, physical education and language. Communities accomplished all of this without the support of our federal education policy, which deemed these areas not worthy of time resources and attention.

We know now without a doubt that the high-stakes standardized teaching and testing strategy that was supposed to help all children, especially those struggling the most, has failed. This is demonstrated most clearly by the results from the independent, authoritative data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which have not changed with the implementation of NCLB, and in some cases have shown declines and increased gaps in academic achievement. Even New York University Professor of Education History Diane Ravitch, who was an ardent, optimistic supporter of NCLB, has now come to reject the entire approach of NCLB for a multiplicity of reasons she clearly elucidates in her most recent book The Death and Life of the Great American School System.

I raise the above issues only to underscore how dramatic a change we need from you and other policy makers. Secretary Duncan has referred to the present economic crisis in our society as an opportunity to make radical change in education, but the Blueprint he’s given us will not provide that. In contrast to the testing, narrow-focus, competitive model the Blueprint offers, a truly transformed educational system would include:

• Sufficient funding for all schools, so that access to a complete education does not depend upon parents raising private funds;

• Complete staffing in all schools, including nurses, librarians, physical education teachers, counselors, teachers assistants, and yard and hall monitors;

• Multiple adults in every classroom, so that we could truly act on the knowledge that people learn in different ways and at different speeds;

• Enough adults in each school to form personal relationships with students and provide an environment of mentoring and apprenticeship;

• A rich curriculum covering literature, science, history, language, art, music, physical education and more, that provides students a broad but solid foundation for understanding the world;

• Promotion of critical thinking, analytical and communication skills, so that our children are able to address complex problems and can effectively express their ideas to others.

• Support for teachers, so that they receive the required training in their subjects, in educational theory and practice, and ongoing quality professional development throughout their teaching career.

• An expansion and diversification of the pool of teachers, so that more teachers have strong connections to the communities in which they are teaching.

• Assessments tools and practices that are meaningfully tied to what a student is learning and that can help teachers adjust their teaching to the needs of that student.

• Prioritization of parent involvement, not just in supporting children at home, but in shaping the school environment and partnering with teachers and principals to create productive learning environments for their kids.

• Understanding that schools are not the same as businesses and that economic imperatives are irrelevant in evaluating students, teachers, schools or educational systems.

The good news is that we already know how to do much of this. FairTest, for instance, has been offering resources and guidance about authentic assessments for years. Long-time educator Deborah Meier, has developed and been in charge of model schools that provide the kind of challenging curriculum and close-knit communities that all children need. Educators, psychologists, and other social scientists from a variety of fields have a deep understanding of how people naturally and most effectively acquire and retain knowledge and information.

These are just some of the ingredients that we need in order to provide our children with the education they deserve and that our society needs them to have. As you consider these suggestions and compare them to the plan outlined in the Blueprint, I ask you to imagine which type of school you would want your own child to be in--that should be the school you give our children too.

Sincerely,
Lisa Schiff
Public school parent
San Francisco, California

Write a letter, send email, make a phone call and even ask for a meeting to tell Representative Miller how you feel and what you want. Now is the time to do it.

Lisa Schiff is the parent of two children in the San Francisco Unified School District and is a member of Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco and the PTA and is a board member at the national level of Parents for Public Schools.

NAACP Goes to Court Over Resegregated Schools in NC

After years of standing on the sidelines watching the resegregation of American public schools, the NAACP has finally had enough. Their target is Wayne County, North Carolina, which has two districts, one all black (four white students) and poor (94%), and the other 90 percent white and economically stable. And here is the real story from the Wilmington Journal, the one that the corporate media ignores (my bolds):

NC'S BATTLE AGAINST SCHOOL RESEGREGATION BEGINS, WEEK OF DECEMBER 3-9, 2009
by CASH MICHAELS
The Wilmington Journal
Originally posted 12/3/2009

New Hanover County has been identified as one of the counties that the NC NAACP will be monitoring closely, and if there is evidence of racial resegregation, the NAACP will legally challenge it.

On Dec. 1st, the 54th anniversary of civil rights icon Rosa Parks' historic refusal to accept racial segregation as the law of the land, North Carolina saw the opening salvos in a war over education where resegregation is front and center.

In Wayne County, the school board there found itself the target of a Title VI federal civil rights complaint filed by the NC NAACP, alleging that the Wayne County Public School Board engaged in policies ''that have resulted in the creation of extreme resegregation and a district of apartheid education''

It has formally petitioned the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the US Dept. of Education, and the US Dept. of Justice's Civil Rights Division (CRD) to investigate.

And in Wake County, where four new anti-student diversity school board members were sworn-in Tuesday amid stated gratitude to the Republican Party for their election victories, the conservative-led body moved immediately not only to wrest away the chairmanship, but also to impose an extensive reform agenda that will end busing for diversity during the 2010-11 school year.

New Wake school board members John Tedesco, Debra Goldman, Deborah Prichett and Christopher Malone joined conservative bedfellow and veteran member Ron Margiotta in first electing him the new board chair, ousting Kevin Hill, who had seven more months before his term ended.

Then the ''Conservative Five'' of the nine-member board, without missing a beat, whipped out an eight-point pre-planned agenda that none of the four remaining school board members, nor the public, had seen before, and attempted to codify all of the resolutions as board policy in one seven-hour session.

In fact, before they were forced to follow established school board protocol and refer their resolution to end student diversity to the board's policy committee, the new conservative majority distributed a copy of the current student assignment policy 6200.

Where one of the stated goals of previous Wake school boards was ''creating and maintaining a diverse student body,'' a line was drawn through it. Other references to diversity in the policy were also crossed out, and replaced with either ''neighborhood'' or ''community.''

According to African-American school board member Keith Sutton, it is clear that the new conservative majority intends to quickly establish a neighborhood schools policy, which observers say would racially and socioeconomically resegregate the Wake School System.

A previously unscheduled school board meeting for December 15 is now on the calendar, and the new Wake board is expected to ratify its change in the diversity policy then. That means a policy committee meeting, also previously not scheduled, will have to take place by next week to adopt those changes.

The chair of that committee, is also the new chair of the board, Ron Margiotta.

The new board moved so quickly to rush in their sweeping reforms that angry teachers and parents in the audience, originally at the first school board meeting to wish the new members well and offer to work with them, instead started booing and hissing every action taken by the conservative majority.

During the public comment phase, all but one of the 20 speakers pleaded with the new board to go slow, and listen to the community before instituting sweeping changes.

They were ignored.

Local leaders like J. Ronald White, president of the South Central-Wake NAACP, says in order to safeguard the education of all children in the system, especially African-American student, the new school board will be vigorously challenged and held accountable.

John Tedesco, the new District 2 school board member, was quoted as telling The News & Observer newspaper that what happened at their first meeting was just ''the tip of the iceberg'' of what the new majority ultimately intends to do.

The sentiment flew in the face of a threat from the NCNAACP, which had previously warned the new Wake school board that it would be subject to a lawsuit if its new policies resegregated schools and denied black children their constitutional right to a ''sound, basic education.''

That was the basis of the federal complaint filed against Wayne County Public Schools earlier that day by not only the state NAACP, but also the Goldsboro-Wayne County chapter, and fully endorsed by the national NAACP office.

At a press conference at the NC Dept. of Public Instruction, NC NAACP President Rev. William Barber said after years to trying to resolve issues of educational inequality with the Wayne County schools without success, the Title VI was now necessary.

''Title VI was enacted as part of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance,'' Rev. Barber said in a statement. ''As President John F. Kennedy said in 1963, ''Simple justice requires that public funds, to which all taxpayers of all races [colors, and national origins] contribute, not be spent in any fashion which encourages, entrenches, subsidizes or results in racial [color or national origin] discrimination.''

''We file this complaint on behalf of all children assigned to the Goldsboro, N.C. Attendance District described in the complaint, and all other children in the Wayne County Schools who are deprived of constitutional education by the policies and practices of the Wayne County School Board. The Complaint alleges Wayne County Schools (WCS) has established and carried out the policies and practices described herein and that other private and public entities in Wayne County and the State, also recipients of federal funds, have encouraged, subsidized and otherwise supported the WCS in implementing these practices and policies,'' Barber continued.

''Because of the complex and historical nature of the zoning, lending, planning, hiring, teacher placement, student placement, school placement and other policies that have directly and indirectly caused the re-segregation and other practices that adversely impact the complaining class, we respectfully request the CRD's direct participation, in coordination with the OCR's investigation, in determining the participation of municipal, state and federal entities (including Seymour Johnson Air Force Base-the major employer in Wayne County), all recipients of federal funds, in the discriminatory practices alleged herein.''

Rev. Barber by the Goldsboro school district being virtually 100 percent black and denied proper funding by the Wayne County School Board is just some of the compelling evidence of disparities that deny black students their constitutional right to an appropriate education.

''The Wayne County Board of Education, through exclusionary policies, gross neglect, indifferent attitudes, and failure to take corrective actions, has caused and will continue to cause grave and immeasurable harm to all African-American students in Wayne County, and particularly to those in the Goldsboro [''Black''] District, because this District has been stereotyped and then become a District of Racially Identifiable Schools,'' Barber alleged.

''Wayne County is in Eastern North Carolina, about 50 miles southeast of Raleigh and 89 miles north of Wilmington. So, in essence less than 45 minutes from the State Capital our tax dollars are supporting a school a system that has created a pre-1954 school system in 2009.''

Including Wake and New Hanover counties in his statement was no accident of Rev. Barber's part. He said local NAACP chapters in those and other counties statewide will be monitoring their local school boards closely, and where there is evidence of racial resegregation, the NAACP will legally challenge it.

Teacher Appeals to New President on NCLB

Here is part of an open letter from Bill Heller of upstate New York:

. . . .Now, all year long, precious days are lost and enormous amounts of money are spent on annual testing. Out here in the country we have a saying: "Nobody ever fattened a calf by weighing it." Unfortunately, we've figured out that only tested subjects "count" anymore. Many of our limited resources get pumped into the few areas that get tested; other areas are given short shrift when it comes to funding, staffing and, more importantly time. In order to combat this two-tiered system of "core" and "non-core" subjects, time requirements need to be imposed so that all students at all levels get the chance to take music, art, foreign languages, vocational training and other non-tested subjects.

One more change that needs to be made in NCLB is how we treat special education students. In order to play the NCLB game and to avoid having the stigma of being labeled a "failing school," there is a lot of pressure not to classify needy students in order to avoid having to disaggregate data and make AYP for special education students as a separate subgroup. In addition, students with very limited abilities are dumped into classes that are way beyond their developmental abilities instead of being given appropriate instruction at a level at which they can be successful. Some have been forced to sit through lengthy exams that they have no hope of passing. In the same vein, we need to recognize that not all students will want to pursue a four-year college degree. In fact, we need more tool and die makers, more skilled carpenters, plumbers, and electricians; more nurses, EMTs and child care workers. Vocational programs could be made just as rigorous, incorporating meaningful certification and licensure requirements attainable by the time a student graduates from high school. . . .

. . . .Above all, Mr. President-elect, I hope you can help create a climate of zero tolerance for bashing teachers. The teachers I work with will bend over backwards to help students as long as they are given a say in how best to do it and as long as they are not made to feel that their health care and pensions are not under constant attack in the media and the marketplace. Those who would like to use business models and metaphor as a solution to the "failures" of the public schools are mistaken. Businesses can be held accountable for a finished product because they can control the quality of the raw materials used. We need greater cooperation, not greater competition among schools and among teachers. Public schools take all comers, which is as it should be. America's teachers do the best with what they have. Anything that needs fixing in the public schools needs first to be "fixed" in the home and in the values promulgated by the mass media. Take care of the home and the schools will fix themselves.

Join the Campaign to Stop NCLB

From Susan Ohanian:

A longtime educator in Oregon suggested that I mail my book When Childhood Collides with NCLB to every member of the House and Senate education committees--and offered $100 to start a fund to pay the costs of doing this.

I've listed committee members below.

I agreed to send out the books and asked that people send me letters by e-mail to members of the committee who live in their states. I will send the book in their name, along with the cover letter.

So if you would liked to participate, write a short letter to Bernie Sanders, member of the Senate education committee, e-mail it to me, and I will print it up and send it out along with a copy of the book.

This campaign just started late last night, but so far I have sent books and letters to 13 committee members arepresenting Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Georgia, and Vermont as well as Oregon. These letters are short but they make NCLB personal to the constituents involved, as well as personal to the senders. They went out today--with the book.

Since there are 69 members of Congress serving on these two committees, this is a large, expensive undertaking (think $3.00 just for mailer and postage). I published this book as a grassroots venture, hoping the low cost would encourage people to spread the message. Maybe this current activity is more spitting in the wind, but I'd rather fight than whine.

You can e-mail me your letter and I will send it along with a copy of When Childhood Collides with NCLB:
susano@gmavt.net

If you want your own copy of the book, send $8.95 to
Susan Ohanian
P. O. Box 26
Charlotte, VT 05445

www.susanohanian.org

Full House Committee, 110th Congress

Democrats

* George Miller, Chairman (CA-07)
* Dale E. Kildee (MI-05)
* Donald M. Payne (NJ-10)
* Robert E. Andrews (NJ-01)
* Robert C. Scott (VA-03)
* Lynn C. Woolsey (CA-06)
* Rubén Hinojosa (TX-15)
* Carolyn McCarthy (NY-04)
* John F. Tierney (MA-06)
* Dennis J. Kucinich (OH-10)
* David Wu (OR-01)
* Rush D. Holt (NJ-12)
* Susan A. Davis (CA-53)
* Danny K. Davis (IL-07)
* Raúl M. Grijalva (AZ-07)
* Timothy H. Bishop (NY-01)
* Linda T. Sánchez (CA-39)
* John Sarbanes (MD-03)
* Joe Sestak (PA-07)
* Dave Loebsack (IA-02)
* Mazie Hirono (HI-02)
* Jason Altmire (PA-04)
* John Yarmuth (KY-03)
* Phil Hare (IL-17)
* Yvette Clarke (NY-11)
* Joe Courtney (CT-02)
* Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01)

Republicans

* Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, Ranking Member (CA-25)
* Thomas E. Petri (WI-06)
* Peter Hoekstra (MI-02)
* Michael N. Castle (DE-At Large)
* Mark E. Souder (IN-03)
* Vernon J. Ehlers (MI-03)
* Judy Biggert (IL-13)
* Todd Russell Platts (PA-19)
* Ric Keller (FL-8)
* Joe Wilson (SC-02)
* John Kline (MN-02)
* Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05)
* Kenny Marchant (TX-24)
* Tom Price (GA-06)
* Luis G. Fortuño (PR)
* Charles W. Boustany, Jr. (LA-07)
* Virginia Foxx (NC-05)
* John R. "Randy" Kuhl, Jr. (NY-29)
* Rob Bishop (UT-01)
* David Davis (TN-01)
* Timothy Walberg (MI-07)

Senate COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Democrats by Rank

Edward Kennedy (MA)
Christopher Dodd (CT)
Tom Harkin (IA)
Barbara A. Mikulski (MD)
Jeff Bingaman (NM)
Patty Murray (WA)
Jack Reed (RI)
Hillary Rodham Clinton(NY)
Barack Obama (IL)
Bernard Sanders (I) (VT)
Sherrod Brown (OH)

Republicans by Rank

Michael B. Enzi (WY)
Judd Gregg (NH)
Lamar Alexander (TN)
Richard Burr (NC)
Johnny Isakson (GA)
Lisa Murkowski (AK)
Orrin G. Hatch (UT)
Pat Roberts (KS)
Wayne Allard (CO)
Tom Coburn, M.D. (OK)

Inhumane Testing 5, Doug Ward 0

From the Asheville Citizen-Times:

May 27, 2008

Jackson County teacher loses job over EOG testing dispute

Mike McWilliams

Jackson County Board of Education members on Monday voted unanimously to fire a teacher who refused to administer state end-of-grade tests to his students with severe disabilities.
The board went into closed session for about two hours during its meeting before voting 5-0 to agree with the superintendent’s recommendation that Doug Ward’s contract not be renewed, Ward said.

“They’re also keeping me suspended through the end of the year. They’re not going to let me come back and say goodbye to the kids,” Ward said. “But that’s what I expected.”

Ward, 36, a teacher at Cullowhee Valley School, sent a letter to his school and district administration May 12 saying he would not participate in the NCEXTEND1 because recent test changes made it impossible for his students to pass.

Students with disabilities must be tested under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. This is the first time a North Carolina teacher has refused to administer standardized tests, according to the N.C. Department of Public Instruction.

Phone messages left with school board members were not immediately returned Monday.

Ward said he hopes to explore working as an administrator as he expects to be blackballed as a teacher.

“Hopefully this whole thing will motivate (the school board) to maybe take a second look,” Ward said. “But I realize it’s more of a system issue than anything else. They’re just kind of fulfilling their roles in the system and unfortunately, due to the law, that really doesn’t give them any latitude to use some logic or critical thinking when it comes to decisions."

Carl Chew No Longer Just Following Orders

Susan Ohanian has some new links to the Chew story, along with this Bracey commentary from Huffington Post called "Chew on This":

by Gerald Bracey

One seldom hears about The Nuremberg Precedent in education except in history class discussions of the post-World War II trials of Nazis. Some Nazi leaders said they could not have known the consequences of their policies and orders and others said they were just following orders. Their judges said "that's not good enough."

The body count from No Child Left Behind grows daily and one wonders when the perpetrators will be called to account. In a decent nation, the larger society holds the government accountable. In a program like NCLB, the government holds the citizenry accountable.

Now comes Carl Chew, a 6th grade science teacher in Seattle who has decided to say "enough." That last sentence might at some point be altered to read "former 6th grade science teacher." On April 15, Mr. Chew refused to administer the WASL, the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, which serves to satisfy the NCLB testing requirements.

Administrators tried to dissuade Mr. Chew from his act of civil disobedience, then escorted him from the school. Three days later, Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson sent Mr. Chew a letter that began, "This letter is to inform you that I have determined that there is probably cause to suspend you from April 21, 2008 through May 2, 2008 without pay for your refusal and insubordination to your principal's written direction to administer the WASL at Eckstein Middle School." What happens May 5 is not clear (May 3 is a Saturday).

In writing to explain his action, Mr. Chew expressed his love for teaching, for his students and for his fellow teachers, and expressed sorrow that his act had cause pain for some people, but added "I could no longer stand idly by as something as wrong as WASL is perpetrated on our children year after year."

This indictment was not a general statement or an impetuous one. It was followed by a list of 24 thoughtful reasons why WASL is bad for kids, parents, teachers, and schools and nine reasons why it is "just bad." One can only imagine that the perpetrators of WASL -- and its many look-alikes, like the Nazis at Nuremberg, knew what the consequences of their policies and actions would be. A few examples:

Bad for kids: "There is no middle ground -- children either pass or fail which leaves them confused, guilty, and frustrated". (This is one of the grand absurdities of NCLB--you're either proficient or left behind. Learning doesn't occur in such either/or dichotomies. It occurs in continua, and in all likelihood, multidimensional continua; Chew later observes that many students who were simply told that they had failed were, in fact, very close to the passing score and that many of these children cried on receiving the results).

Bad for teachers: "A majority of teachers loath the WASL, but feel unable to speak out freely against it due to their fears of negative consequences for doing so" (many, many examples show that these fears are real; they are they are reinforced in many cases by principals' contracts which mandate specific increases in test scores each year as a condition of employment).

Bad for parents: "Most parents are misled by official statements about what the purpose of the WASL is" (it is the academic equivalent of saying we're going to war in Iraq to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction).

Bad for schools: Washington State will spend $56 million in 2009 just to have the damn things graded by a private corporation.

I can only hope that people will one day look back on high-stakes testing the way they now look back at slavery -- in disgust and a with sense of horrified wonder: what were they thinking? To mix metaphors, you don't build a house with a wrecking ball.

Minnesota Passes First Test to NCLB Withdrawal

From Hometown Source.com:

by T.W. Budig
ECM Capitol reporter

The House K-12 Finance Committee on Tuesday (March 25) voted to end Minnesota’s participation in the federal testing program, No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

The committee on a bipartisan vote adopted an amendment by Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, for the state to drop out of NCLB.

“If it feels good, do it,” Garofalo urged committee members of voting for his amendment, several of whom expressing sourness over the mandated testing but also qualms about opting out. “I would say we are smart enough to run our schools,” Garofalo said.

Loss of $200 million in funding

Opting out of NCLB could mean the loss of about $200 million in federal funding, he argued. But that’s not even covering the cost, Garofalo opined.

The House K-12 Finance Committee on Tuesday (March 25) adopted an amendment offered by Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, that directs the state commission of education to nullify the state's No New Child Left Behind plan with the federal government — to opt-out of the testing program. . . . .

Virginia's NCLB Pullout Now in Hands of State BOE

From the Virginan-Pilot:

The General Assembly won't recommend the state try to pull out of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, under a compromise measure agreed to by the House of Delegates on Friday.

Instead, the governor will likely get a bill that leaves it to the Virginia Board of Education to recommend what to do if federal officials don't grant the state waivers from the landmark education law. HB1425 and SB490 originally said that if the waivers weren't granted, the state board would develop a plan to withdraw from NCLB by July 2009.

Senators kept removing the language, and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has frowned on withdrawing. Del. Steve Landes, R-Weyers Cave, said he ceded to the tamped-down measure in an effort to get a bill passed. Both the House and Senate version were amended Friday and passed by the House. The Senate is expected to pass them as well.

"Even though this is a scaled-back version of the original bill," Landes said, "it definitely keeps the issue out there."

Gordon Hickey, a spokesman for Kaine, said the amended bill appears to be more palatable. Hickey added that Kaine "supports the concept. He is opposed to withdrawing from NCLB."

Virginia Plans for NCLB Secession

May the force be with them:

By Richard Quinn
The Virginian-Pilot
© February 25, 2008
RICHMOND

The General Assembly is flirting with abandoning a landmark federal law that governs schools in the United States.

The decision could make Virginia the first state to set a deadline – summer 2009 – for planning a pullout from the No Child Left Behind Act, which ties billions of dollars to federally mandated testing standards in public schools.

State politicians have balked at some of those standards in the past few years. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has signed bills asking the U.S. Department of Education to waive parts of the federal law.

Most of those exemptions were granted, but the notable ones that have not been approved frustrate educators and annoy legislators.

This year, some politicians want to up the ante.

Both the Senate and the House of Delegates are working with bills that say that if the state’s waiver requests aren’t granted, Virginia’s Board of Education would develop a plan to withdraw from NCLB by July 2009. Delegates have approved the bills, even adding language to one seeking to recoup federal tax money if the state withdraws.

Senators keep deleting the deadline, leaving the bills – SB490 and HB1425 – more open-ended. Legislators from both chambers will have to negotiate a compromise for a bill with a deadline to make it to the governor’s desk.

Kaine hasn’t said what he would do with the measure, which could cost Virginia more than $350 million a year in federal aid.

Del. Steve Landes, R-Weyers Cave, the bill ’s sponsor in the House, said that now is an opportune time to take a stand, with the NCLB law up for renewal and a new president taking office in January 2009 .

“We’ve done everything we can think to do,” said Landes, who has pushed the issue along with Sen. Emmett Hanger Jr., R-Augusta. “We’re at the point … this is it, we’ll move forward on a plan to get out unless you provide the relief.”

The brinkmanship in Virginia is typical of the friction NCLB has caused nationally, said David Shreve, federal affairs counsel for education for the National Conference of State Legislatures. Shreve said he thinks Virginia would be the first state to set a formal deadline to pull out of the law. . . .

Latino Parents in Chicago to Lead Testing Boycott?

What most parents don't know is that they have full legal authority to keep their children home, rather than subjecting them to the abusive tests that the numbskull politicians keep shoving on children and parents and schools.

While Wall Street, Congress, and the White House remain unaccountable to anyone for an unnecessary war, for illegal spying, for the mortgage crisis, for sanctioned torture, for the ecological disaster, for increasing poverty, for jobs exported, for crushing national debt, for no health care for 50 million Americans, for segregated schools, for crumbling national infrastructure, for unprecendented corporate-government corruption, and for oppression of the poor and minorities, they expect Latino children in Chicago to be accountable for tests they cannot read, just as they expect poor children in Camden to perform the same as the middle class children in Cherry Hill. Could any situation be more insane??

The only way parents are going to get any attention to their plight is to boycott the tests. Keep your children home, and this NCLB child abuse, along with the testocracy that it has inspired, will collapse like a house of cards. Parents truly have the power to end the madness.

The story from Chicago Sun-Times:

Angry Chicago Latino parents threatened Tuesday to keep their kids home on test day next month if state education officials insist on giving students who are still learning English an achievement test in English.

Facing threats of federal sanctions, state officials were ordered last October to give the same state tests native English speakers take to some 60,000 Illinois public school kids who haven’t yet mastered English.

During a news conference Tuesday at the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, about two dozen Latino parents charged that the test mandate is “unfair,’’ “anti-immigrant’’ and “anti-bilingual education.’’

They were joined by State Sen. Iris Martinez (D-Chicago), who said the federal government was “trying to take this program [bilingual education] away from us’’ by forcing children to take a test in English before they are fluent.

“This is a way of attacking children who don’t understand the language,’’ said Martinez, who is pushing a resolution to delay the test for a year.

Previously, Illinois kids in bilingual education programs for less than three years took an alternative state test in English.

But last October federal education officials ruled that test did not meet federal No Child Left Behind standards. They ordered Illinois bilingual education students who have been in public schools for more than a year to take the same tests native English speakers take, starting March 3.

Speaking through a Spanish-English translator, parent Erika Soto said her third-grade daughter is “very smart, but because of this test, she is going to be labeled a failure. So how is she going to feel?’’

Parents raised their hands in agreement Tuesday when asked if they would keep their children home rather than have them take the new test.

“We have to push them to pay attention and if this is the way to get them to pay attention, I will do it,’’ said Leticia Barrera, parent of a Monroe Elementary third grader.

Barrera’s daughter, Arely, said she did poorly on practice tests, and is worried she’ll tank the real thing.

“I’m scared,’’ said Arely, age 9. “I think I’m going to fail. I’m not prepared to do the test.’’ . . . .

At Lincoln Elementary, They Are Free At Last

Please help Lincoln Elementary, a rural school in Lindsay, California make up the $250,000 they relinquished in Title I funds to go NCLB free.

Story from Susie Pakoua Vang at the Fresno Bee (photo by Christian Parley) :

Lincoln Elementary is among a small number of U.S. schools turning down Title I funds -- and gaining independence.

By Susie Pakoua Vang / The Fresno Bee
01/20/08 22:17:30
LINDSAY -- Last fall, one little elementary school in this poor farm town did something startling: it said no to nearly $250,000 in federal funds. In exchange, Lincoln Elementary gained something its teachers considered even more valuable: more independence.

"We want to do a better job than we've been able to do and we want to do that by being flexible," Principal Pam Canby said.

Lincoln is among a small number of U.S. schools -- no one can say how many for sure -- that have gained flexibility in following federal education mandates by turning down Title I funds.

In rare cases, whole school districts have rejected Title I as a way to opt out of the federal academic accountability system set up by the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. But most heed the warnings of state and federal educators who caution that the cost of giving up Title I can be steep.

The federal dollars are distributed to state education departments, which then give the money to school districts based on poverty and low test scores. Districts then decide which schools receive Title I funding, with priority given to schools with 75% or more low-income students. Funds can be used for staff development, supplemental materials and literacy and math coaches.

In return, schools receiving the money must show test results demonstrating that an ever-escalating share of their student bodies meet proficiency standards in English and math.

No Child Left Behind has met strong opposition since it became law. Some educators and parents say the program is under-funded and forces teachers to follow a standard script, rather than adapt to the needs of their students.

"Many teachers no longer can be innovative in their teaching," said Mike Green, a California Teachers Association representative and Lindsay Unified teacher. "A lot of that has to do with the fact that you are required to teach to the test."

Some local and national educators share Green's frustrations. Canby said Lincoln educators have been "diligent in marching to the tune of Title I." The school worked with a board of education experts who evaluated and monitored the campus' academic progress under the federal program.

The school also saw a major shift in staffing. Canby was brought in about five years ago after Lincoln failed to reach annual academic targets, Lindsay Unified Superintendent Janet Kliegl said. More than half the teaching staff is new.

District officials took the unusual step of giving up $243,000 -- out of its budget of $4 million -- to free the school from Title I mandates because too much time was spent on paperwork, when time could be better spent on more innovative teaching efforts.

Kliegl said Lincoln was a good candidate for the change because overall it is a high-achieving school, but there are groups of students, such as English learners, who miss federal targets. This calls for a more flexible approach, she said.

Tom Rooney, Lindsay Unified's assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, said No Child Left Behind requires a great deal of staff time on paperwork.

"That is necessary for some schools and it's necessary for some districts," Rooney said. "We've made the decision that that's not a necessary burden to put on [Lincoln]."

In past years officials spent Title I money on computers, learning programs and literacy and math coaches to try to meet the standards.
Now, Lincoln's staff will use creative student programs that teachers would not have had time for under provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act. These include teaching via the Internet, far-ranging field trips and a renewed focus on science and the arts.

"We want our kids to go out on the road, go to the ocean, go to the mountains," Canby said. She wants students to appreciate music and art, which often were dropped from classrooms in order to focus entirely on improving test scores under the No Child Left Behind Act.

"An effective citizen is a person who is fluent in the arts. It's not just about reading and writing," she said.

Canby said she also wants to see a strong focus on science, which previously took a back seat to English and math.

Although the school no longer is obligated to meet federal mandates, the campus still must meet the state's Academic Performance Index benchmarks, which measure annual academic growth. Index scores range from 200 to 1,000, with all schools working toward 800 or better.

Lincoln is still far from the state goal. Last August, test results from the California Department of Education showed Lincoln dipped 38 points from its previous score of 691.

It's unclear how many other schools nationwide have followed the same path, but Lincoln is not alone.

Thousands of miles away, the Community Consolidated School District 21 board in Wheeling, Ill. has rejected about $250,000 in Title I for the past three years, said Kate Hyland, an assistant superintendent. She said consultants were assigned to underperforming schools, which resulted in several meetings, but little progress.

"It's a very punitive law. ... Our board really took a stand in saying, 'We are philosophically opposed to the law,' " Hyland said.

Other California educators have inquired about refusing the federal dollars as a way to gain more local control, but it's difficult to track how many schools, if any, followed through, said Jerry Cummings, who works for the state's Title I policy office.

While rejecting Title I isn't yet a trend, "it's potentially the front end of what could be a wider movement," said Jeffrey Henig, a professor of political science and education at Columbia University Teachers' College in New York City.

Janie Castro, Lincoln Elementary's Parent Teacher Organization president, said she supports the new vision for her school. She noted Canby prepared the school to do without Title I, partly because she used previous Title I money to buy long-term resources, such as computers and software. Said Castro: "We know that she's going to make this work."

While the school can do without Title I this year, next year could bring some changes. Nancy Frank, the school's math coach, said the lack of money may mean returning as a classroom teacher. Frank said that means she may not have time to go into several classrooms each day to teach students or offer one-on-one teaching sessions with new staff members.

To help make up the difference, the school has asked for financial help -- and some is already trickling in. A citrus company provided Lincoln a $20,000 grant to help the campus be a model for rural school reform, Canby said.

Mike Wood, a science consultant who was on Lincoln's alternative governance board, said it isn't easy for the school to give up more than $240,000. But he said it's important for local educators to dictate what is best for students. Said Wood: "Let's make learning fun again."

A Call for the Repeal of No Child Left Behind

Steve Novick (D) is running for a seat in the U. S. Senate from Oregon. From Op-Ed News:

A Call for the Repeal of No Child Left Behind

By Steve Novick

Six years ago, George Bush signed a law, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), that told the states that every public school student in America would have to meet state standards for proficiency in reading and math, as determined by standardized testing, by 2014. That law said that schools that did not make what the law described as adequate progress toward that goal would face a series of sanctions, the last of which would be "restructuring" the entire school – by, for instance, firing most of the staff, and / or turning operation of the school over to a private management company.

It is no secret that in the past six years, many educators, administrators, parents, and politicians have complained long and loud about the implementation of NCLB. What remains a mystery, to me at least, is why so few members of Congress had the courage and the sense to vote against this law when it was first proposed. For it is, and always should have been, fairly obvious that NCLB was, from the beginning, the domestic policy equivalent of the war in Iraq – a proposal sold on blatantly false pretenses, to fulfill an agenda that had little or nothing to do with the Administration’s stated rationale.

Why do I say that? Well, let’s look at the stated goal of the law: Every child in America must meet state standards for proficiency in math and science by 2014. And yes, they really do mean virtually every child. The Bush Administration has outlined some minimal exceptions, but the law does really mean 100%.

Now, some people have argued that the goal itself was always wildly inappropriate. That the idea that EVERY child should meet state standards by 2014 was always pie in the sky, unless the standards were so watered-down as to be meaningless.

But if you did take the goal seriously, one of the first things you would have done was determine the cost of meeting it. Because, obviously, there will be a cost. You’re not going to get anywhere close to 100% proficiency without reducing class sizes, giving many kids on-on-one instruction, improving professional development programs, experimenting with new curricula and new instructional materials.

If George Bush had come to Oregon, we could have told him that we had already developed a formula for calculating the cost of getting ninety percent of students to state standards. In the 1990’s, a bipartisan commission of very thoughtful Oregonians developed what they called the "quality education model." Today, the QEM tells us what kind of additional investment in class size reduction, new materials, teacher training and so forth we would need to have a good chance of getting 90% of students to state standards in this school year. The answer? About $750 million more a year – to take us from today, when on average about 70% of students meet state standards (with variations by grade and by subject), to 90% proficiency.

Obviously, to get anywhere close to 100% will take a lot more. As any educator can tell you, the last 10% would likely be the hardest. Kids from troubled homes, kids with learning disabilities, kids with severe challenges that will require all the help and support an educator can provide – and even then there is no guarantee of success. It seems safe to say any kind of good-faith effort to get to 100% would have to cost at least another $750 million a year in Oregon alone.

So has the Federal government under NCLB given Oregon and other states the resources to meet this standard set out by the act? Have they given us an extra $1.5 billion in the last couple of budget? No. The entire federal investment in Oregon schools this year is $470 million. In real terms, that’s about a $100 million increase above what the Feds were giving Oregon in the 2000-2001 school year. Put another way, the federal government now provides, total, 9.7% of the funding for public schools in Oregon. In 2000-2001, they provided 7.4%.

Think about those numbers for a minute. We know it would take an extra $750 million a year to get the 90% goal set out in the Quality Education Model - they give us $100 million and say "now hit 100%." They used to provide 7.4% of the funding – they say "we’ll ratchet that up to 9.7%, and in return you have to create Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon: make every child above average, or face the consequences."

Did Bush and his advisors ever really think this would work? It seems unlikely. And Oregon, by the way, is not some outlier; our standards aren’t absurdly high, nor are our students and teachers leading the nation in incompetence. Any state with reasonably ambitious academic standards faces the same kind of problems with Bush’s school law that we do.
So the Bush Administration didn’t really think that they were going to make every student in America above average. What were they thinking? What was their motivation?

I’ll tell you what my mother said at the time. And yes, my mother is, on this issue, a highly reliable source. She was one of the first Head Start teachers. Much later, she got her Ph. D in early childhood education, and became a researcher at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. And when this law was proposed, she said: "The purpose of this law is to discredit and then privatize public education. In 2014, they’ll say: ‘See? Public education has failed. They haven’t made every child above average. So it’s time for vouchers and privatization.’"

Does that sound far-fetched? It shouldn’t. Clearly, the real purpose of this law was not its stated purpose, so what other possibilities are there? This Administration has partly privatized Medicare, tried to privatize Social Security, largely privatized the war in Iraq. In the eyes of George Bush, Dick Cheney and their cronies, the purpose of government is to allow the cronies to make a few, or a few million, or a few billion extra bucks. Why wouldn’t they try it with our public education system?

I’ll tell you one person who wouldn’t think it’s far-fetched: Jonathan Kozol. The stated purpose of this law was to help low-income and minority children. The famous author of "Savage Inequalities" has spent decades as a fierce advocate for those children. And in a recent article in Harper’s, Kozol had this to say about the Bush education law:

Among the various "sanctions" that this highly controversial law imposes upon low-performing schools are two provisions that have opened up these schools to interventions by private corporations on a scale that we have never before seen in the United States.

Kozol points first to the law’s requirement that schools who have ‘failed’ for three years must spend a certain amount of money on ‘supplemental services’ – which, in practice, has largely meant, test-preparation services provided by private contractors. Next, Kozol notes that when schools are forced to ‘reconstitute’ under new management, "it is the profit-making firms, with their superb promotional machinery, that are best positioned to obtain these valuable contracts."

Other people who don’t think my mother’s theory is far-fetched would include everybody who has studied the close relationship between the Bush family and the McGraw-Hill Corporation, and who has read the Inspector General’s report on the conflicts of interest that plagued Bush’s Reading First program, in which millions were steered to McGraw-Hill to buy its scripted phonics-only programs. If the purpose of "Reading First" was to steer money to McGraw-Hill, why shouldn’t the purpose of NCLB itself have been to steer more public money to the private sector? McGraw-Hill, by the way, has also made millions upon millions of dollars as purveyors of tests used in the NCLB regime.

But this isn’t the surprise of what happened with No Child Left Behind. The real question is why did so many Democrats vote for it? Why did only ten Senators – mavericks like Paul Wellstone and Russ Feingold – vote "no"?

I think that in part, it was fear. Just as so many Democrats voted for the war because they were afraid of being called soft on terrorism; and so many have voted to continue funding the war, our of fear of being accused of ‘not supporting the troops’; and so many voted to expand warrantless wiretapping authority because, again, they were afraid of being accused of being ‘soft on terrorism’ – I think many voted ‘yes’ because they were afraid that if they said no, Bush would have attacked them for ‘wanting to leave children behind.’
But for others – including the members of Oregon’s own delegation, who do not lack for courage, but voted for this law – I suspect it was misplaced trust. I think they wanted to believe that on this issue, George Bush was sincere. And I think they also trusted Ted Kennedy. Kennedy was supposed to know this issue, and he worked this out with Bush. Why, I don’t know. We can only assume that he didn’t do his homework. He can’t possibly have consulted with educators, researchers, school administrators, and concluded that a two percent increase in funding would make every child above average. Yes, I know that Kennedy argued for a larger increase in Federal funding – but nobody ever talked about the kind of money it would really have taken to even pretend that this law was intended to succeed.

So there are two lessons to be learned from this. The first is, when an Administration comes in and its first priority is slashing taxes for the wealthiest people – if they think that the biggest problem in America is that rich people don’t have enough money – I think you need to question their motivations on most issues; don’t just trust them on anything. The second lesson is, if you’re casting a vote on as big an issue as revamping the entire public education system, don’t trust anybody else to do your homework for you. Don’t vote until you’re talked to the experts in the field, the people on the ground. I promise you that as your next United States Senator, I will remember those lessons – and remind my colleagues of them, as well.

Now we come to the programmatic part of this speech. Obviously, I think the Bush law whose anniversary we mourn today should be put out of our misery. There is one key part of the Act that we should keep: the requirement that schools collect so-called "disaggregated data," using some sort of evaluation method to determine how various groups of kids are doing. Schools should have to show how the low-income kids are doing, how the African-American kids are doing, how the limited-English students are doing, and so on, so communities can see that data and act on it. And the Federal government, which does provide some money that is supposed to go to low-income students, has a right to ask for that information. But that’s a lot different from a right to demand every school district live up to the Lake Wobegon model, based on a 2% increase in funding.

So once the Bush law – with that one exception – is off the books, what’s next? What do I think the Federal role in public education should be?

For starters, the Federal government could do schools a huge favor by adopting a rational national health care policy. Schools, just like General Motors and other private employers who offer health coverage, are increasingly weighted down by health care costs. If we adopted a single-payer national health care system, public schools could reduce class sizes, free up time for the best teachers to act as mentors, restock their libraries with books, hire more counselors, pay janitors and cafeteria workers a decent wage.

Even if we just did what Ron Wyden has suggested – require everyone to have insurance, and require ALL employers to pay something toward health care – it would help the schools; because right now, schools and other employers that provide health care are paying the freight for those that don’t. When uninsured people go to the emergency room, those costs are shifted to the people with insurance – and to their employers.

Second, the Federal government should fulfill its decades-old, decades-neglected promise to fund 40% of the cost of complying with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Historically, the federal government has provided less than half that amount, helping to create an environment in which parents who just want what’s right for their kids too often wind up pitted against school administrators and other parents, in what seems like a zero-sum game.

Third, the U.S. Department of Education should emphasize research and advice, identifying the most promising educational practices in the United States and around the world, and sending ambassadors with that information to school districts across America. Not developing systems of sanctions to set our schools up for failure.

Fourth, it is high time for Uncle Sam to fully fund Head Start, ensuring that every eligible child – every child in poverty – has an opportunity to participate in an enriching pre-school program.

Fifth, the Federal Government, in partnership with states and local districts, should invest in a massive "green school buildings" program – replacing dark, crumbling school buildings across America with new, energy-efficient buildings, maximizing natural light, providing a better learning environment and fighting global warming at the same time. We could call the new green school building program: "Leave No Child in the Dark."

But beyond these priorities, it is clear that we cannot build the education system we need for the future through slogans. Educators, administrators and parents across Oregon and across the nation know the hard work and determination it will take to help our students succeed. It is time for the federal government to be a full a partner in that project, rather than looking for an opportunity to pull the rug out from under our public schools. Thank you.

Authors Website: www.novickforsenate.org

Authors Bio: Steve Novick was raised in Cottage Grove Oregon. Due to failure of a budget levy in 1976, he enrolled at the University of Oregon and graduated at age 18. He then went on to Harvard Law school where he graduated at age 21. After stops in law firms in New York and San Francisco, Steve joined the Environment Division (then known as the "Land and Natural Resources Division") of the United States Justice Department in 1987. He brought successful lawsuits against polluters for violations of the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. He also served as lead counsel in the notorious Love Canal case. On that case in 1995, Steve and his team negotiated a settlement in which Occidental Chemical repaid the taxpayers $129 million in cleanup costs and interest. Returning to Oregon, Steve worked as policy director for Tom Bruggere's 1996 Senate bid. He then served as chief of staff to the Democrats in the State Senate from 1997 to 1999. Subsequently, he was Executive Director of the Center for Constructive Citizen Action, which spearheaded the fight against Bill Sizemore's Measure 91, which would have cut the State budget for schools, health care and public safety by more than 20%. Steve Novick is now running as a progressive democrat for the U.S. Senate and is giving Oregon the chance to defeat Gordon Smith. He is a true candidate of the people, peace, and the environment.

What Is Left Behind

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Let us give thanks for an improved chance now of killing NCLB in the coming year. It is still important to let your Congress know that we are eager for them to stop the educational genocide in the new year.

I am taking a week off from blogging to get some things done and some other things not overdone. In the meantime, my extended mantra:

What Is Left Behind

As NCLB’s reauthorization or expiration takes center stage in Washington, American citizens who care about the future of our public schools and our democracy must be heard. Our shared future is not an abstract political possibility but, rather, one that breathes in every son or daughter, every niece or nephew, every grandson or granddaughter, every neighbor’s child, and every one of our own students who enters the schoolhouse door.

While Secretary Spellings and legislators from both parties stubbornly proclaim that NCLB is working—despite of all the empirical evidence indicating otherwise—and as politicians boast that no child is being left behind, let us pause to consider what has been jettisoned. Let us take a moment to think about what has been left behind, what has been dumped, what has been pushed out the door because there is no longer space or time for it in the school day.

Now if your school still has some of these things, I say congratulations. At the same time, however, I say beware. Beware, because the unattainable goal of 100% proficiency that is the bedrock of NCLB makes it most likely that over the next seven years, your school will join the 30% of schools today where these crucial elements of school have already been left behind.

As American citizens deeply concerned about the health of our democratic republic, we are, of course, concerned and horrified that the social studies have been left behind. In Florida and other states, social studies teachers, afraid of losing their jobs, are lobbying for social studies to be tested, so that their work will survive.

The emphasis on math and reading tests has meant less geography, civics, and government, which leaves children ignorant of how public decisions are made or where their community fits into state, national, and global contexts—or even that there is a context beyond their street and TV screens. Children are left, in effect, stranded on lonely islands of ignorance, without the impetus or skills to have their voices heard in ways that make the world listen.

History, too, has been left behind, making it assured that this next generation will grow up more likely to be swayed by the mistakes and misdeeds of the past to which they remain clueless. What is a democratic republic and where did it come from? Sorry, that’s not on the test, either.

And economics? While children in wealthy communities, the ones without AYP worries yet, play stock market games and learn about hedge funds, the economic education of children in schools under the testing gun consists of collecting “Scholar Dollars” that they trade in for bags of Skittles, a pittance of pay for a meaningless labor whose significance remains a mystery to them.

Health and physical education have been left behind, too, leaving children out of shape and subject to diseases associated with obesity and inactivity. At the same time, children are left in the dark about the importance of healthy foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, the kinds of foods that are scarce in the small stores of poor neighborhoods. And left behind, too, is information about the hazards of a never-ending diet of Taco Bell and McDonalds—because that's not on the test, either.

Art and music have been left behind, leaving in their crossing wakes an imagination gap, a creativity gap, and expression gap, an aesthetic gap, a souls gap. We can add these gaps to the achievement gap that parallels a widening economic gap – despite years and years of increased testing and accountability in those schools where the economic gaps are at their deepest points.

Diversity of thought has been left behind. What remains in failing schools and the ones teetering on the testing bubble are collections of remote and desiccated facts that represent not even a single culture, but rather, an anti-culture that has essentially eradicated cultural values as a discussable issue.

Science has been left behind, too, and thus the primary tool for understanding how the modern world is organized. Where science survives, it is where it is tested, and the kind of science that remains is the kind that can be fit into a multiple-choice format, not the kind that exercises children’s ability to think, solve problems, conduct experiments, and make good decisions.

Literature has been left behind, and with it the love of reading and books and the curiosity that is spawned and kept alive by the life of the imagination. Stories are now substituted by the measured mouthing of nonsense syllables and the framing of comprehension responses that the children who utter them do not understand.

Recess has been left behind in a third of all American elementary schools, and as the percentage of failing schools increases, we may expect that number to rise. Play, itself, then becomes left behind, and along with it one of the most useful skills of all—to think as if, what if, as in what if life were somehow different than, or what if there were a choice beyond a, b, c, or d?

Nap time has been left behind in kindergarten and even in pre-K, as teachers focus on replacing dream time with skill practice time for a future of testing.

Field trips, holidays, and assemblies have been left behind unless they can be used for test preparation, or unless they come after the test, those short precious weeks when smiles may be seen to return to teachers’ lips and to students’ eyes.

The love of the teacher for her craft has been left behind in so many schools, replaced by the burdensome regimen of the pacing guide and the production schedule and the script. And time for teacher-led discussion, exploration, reflection? There is only time for teachers to learn their lines, trying to become good actors in a very bad play where the audience is compelled to participate. And time to weigh the results of the practice tests in order to get ready for the real tests.

Left behind, too, are teacher autonomy and professional discretion. Now whole hallways of fourth grade classes are on the same page of the same scripted lesson at the same moment that any supervisor should walk by, supervisors who are identically trained to look for the same manifestations of sameness, from bulletin boards to hand signals to the distance that children are trained to maintain from one another as they march to lunch, with their arms holding together their imaginary straightjackets.

Most troubling, however, of all that has been left behind is the teacher’s nurturing care, the teacher whose advocacy for and sensitivity to every child’s fragile humanity has been a trademark of what it means to be the teacher of children. With the current laser focus on avoiding test failure, even as expectations become higher with each passing year, the child who cannot do more than a child can do now becomes viewed as the stumbling block to a success that is increasingly elusive.

Instead, then, of being viewed as the reasons we have schools to begin with, the needful child who is, indeed, behind, becomes the obstacle to a proficiency that becomes further and further out of reach. When this occurs, as it surely does every time teachers and principals fall prey to the pressure, children become the burden that must be reluctantly borne, obstacles to a success that their own disability, poverty, or language issues complicate— and that even the best teacher can never compensate for.

Students, then, come to be seen as complicit in creating the failure that, in fact, no one, teacher or student, can remedy, because there is a monstrous system that has made child failure and, thus, school failure inevitable, a monstrous system that has traded and treated this generation of children as a means to attain a political end—a political end that, in fact, threatens our future as a free people who are able to think, to solve problems, to care, to imagine, to understand, to have empathy, to participate, to grow, to live.

So as you listen to the growing debate this fall in Washington, please do not leave your political responsibility behind and your good sense with it. Go online tonight and order the Linda Perlstein book, Tested. . .. Read it and, as you do so, keep in mind that the horror that she so ably describes occurred in a school that is considered a success, a “lighthouse school.” Think, then, of what it must be like in the thirty percent of American schools that are now labeled failures.

Recently, a quote by Cal State professor, Art Costa showed up on one of internet discussion groups, a quote that is horribly relevant today: "What was once educationally significant, but difficult to measure, has been replaced by what is insignificant and easy to measure. So now we test how well we have taught what we do not value."

Call and write and visit your school boards and your Congressional delegation. Remind them what you value and what you believe to be significant for now and for our future, and what you know that now and finally must to be left behind.

Jim Horn
Monmouth University
September 2007

CTA Says No to Pelosi and Miller's NCLB Sequel

From YouTube (ht to Susan Ohanian):

Truth and Consequences: Act Now to Stop NCLB

"Testing improves education the same way that bombing promotes democracy." --Steve Cohn, Professor of Education, Tufts University

Write and call Congress Today
Stop the Madness!

Communities for Quality Education

What is going on in your state to challenge NCLB? This link might have the answer, and it comes from Bob Schaefer at Assessment Reform Network (ARN), a listserv operated by Fairtest.org.